RIP,Legends.

Hello all, I'm back. I'm refreshed, recuperated , re-energised and several other things that begin with "R" as well. And, as a copy of El Camino is in my possession, I'll be doing my top ten albums of the year in  a couple of days -shortly after my worst albums of the year, there's some crackers in that one- and this post which is neccessarily sombre in tone.

In the space of little more than a week, 3 of my favourite sportsmen ever have died.

Last weekend former Everton captain Gary Speed took his own life, seemingly with everything to live for. He was 42. Gary was a husband, father, gentlemen and an Evertonian. That's as fitting an epitaph as you can have.

A couple of days after Gary, Rugby League great Arthur Beetson passed away from a heart attack, aged 66.
In a sport filled with remarkable athletes and tough men, Artie was the most remarkable, the toughest, and -in his position- the best.
Just to let you know how good he was, he played for Queensland and I still loved him-that's something no-one else has managed since.

And this weekend, brazilian football legend Socrates has died.  He was a chain smoker, a qualified doctor and , in a time where the word is overused to describe people , he was truly unique. He was a big man -maybe 6'4- yet he danced and skipped around the pitch with more grace than any footballer I've seen before or after, he had a mass of curly hair, often enhanced with a bandana and a raggedy beard. He was also one of the shining lights of the best national team I've ever seen.

I love this.

 I found the following on a random Everton Fansite -I can't remember which one-  and it struck a chord with me. If you're out there and you wrote this, thanks, it's brilliant.

Everton wear an easy grace. They are a Cary Grant smile with a John Wayne walk. Evertonians know that no matter what befalls them or their club, they'll still be Evertonians. The cheers heard at Goodison are exaultations of pure, white-light joy, and despite the barren years at Goodsion, that brilliance will always eminate from it.

However, there is a dimness across the park. It started when God bannished Satan from heaven and Satan snarled, "Fine, but I'm taking Anfield with me," and God replied, "Whatever."

Because Liverpool supporters know that no matter how many trophies they desperately try to jam into their cabinets, at the end of the day they just aren't Everton. They are simply the hatefull step-son who grows up to be wealthy and powerful, yet filled only with spite for his brother.

The dank world of the Liverpool fan is one of pettiness, false pride and faked orgasms. The cheers heard at Anfield sound more like yelps of anger and cries of pain.

In fact, the next time a Liverpool supporter screams and yells at you after their team win a match, simply smile at them. What they are really yelling is, "Do ya love me now, daddy???"

Jim White Ruined my Birthday. Again.

Yesterday was my birthday -no, I'm not telling you how old I am- it also happens to be the football (soccer for you, my american cousins) transfer deadline day. And every year on August 31st, Jim White ruins my birthday.
I know what you're thinking -"Ok Fizz, who the fuck is Jim White?" and it's a fair enough question if A) you don't like football, or B) you don't live in the UK.
Jim White is Sky TV's equivalent of the transfer deadline day's Grim Reaper, Megatron and Hannibal Lecter all rolled into one. If you're an Evertonian, that is.
This year, big Jim gleefully told me that we'd just sold arguably our best player to Arsenal. Thanks Jim. Fucker. Stop smiling.
In between shots of Peter Crouch's people carrier, Yakubu smiling like he'd just been given the keys to Pizza Hut and strangely large mobs of youths behind reporters in car parks, it came to pass that Everton had sold 3 players and bought none -bar a couple of "interesting" loan deals, one an argentinian striker who appears to be more Martin Palermo than Leo Messi, and a famously mad dutchman. Brilliant.
Jim white ruined my birthday. Again.

Jim White yesterday, shortly after ruining my birthday.

Short thoughts. (Sports)

Tonight sees the heavyweight boxing unification bout between David Haye and Wladimir Klitschko and it's an intriguing contest for a few reasons. Firstly it's a classic big man /smaller man contest, with Haye giving away about 4 inches in height and around 40 pounds in weight by the time they actually get in the ring.
You might think that that's an insurmountable disadvantage for the Englishman, but I don't think so. He appears to be in peak condition and he was always fast anyway. It's his speed that will be key to the whole contest.
If Haye can get inside the Kazakh born Ukrainians admittedly impressive jab do some damage and get out, I think he'll win.
I hope he wins.

Nice hat Champ. Brokeface Mountain?

Today is also the start of Le Tour, and it looks like it'll be another walk in the park for Contador - well, it will be unless one of the Schleck brothers, Sanchez or Evans can finally get their shit together.

If (when?) Contador wins, will his victory be tainted because of the failed drug test? Maybe. 

Incidentally, if the Spaniard does win he'll be the first rider to win the Giro and Tour in the same season since Marco Pantani.

I hope  Contadors' story finishes in a different way than The Pirates did.

Contador, yesterday

The Copa America started yesterday and hosts Argentina were held to an underwhelming 1-1 draw with relative minnows Bolivia. Kun Aguero's frankly brilliant volley saved Argentina's blushes, but it doesn't bode overly well for their hopes of winning the tournament.

Brazil will probably win again, sadly.

Brazil -about to win another Copa America, yesterday

Ps. I was right about the tennis then.

Short thoughts

Nathan Van Someren, a not particularly well known participant in Australia's 2nd best team sport -AFL- was sent off on saturday. Why am I telling you this? Surely being sent of in the rufty-tufty world of Aussie Rules can't be that rare? Well, no. No it isn't.  But this guy was sent off for having a dangerous haircut. I'm not even making it up. hahahaha

Here's the offending do in all it's dangerousness.

Nathan yesterday, being dangerous.

A man from Brighton has been fined £80 by some particularly joyless bastard from the local council for allowing his terrier to skateboard around the streets of the town -again, I'm not making this up- He was fined for the dog being "Out of control". What, couldn't it land a kickflip properly? Too much rotation on a 360? No, apparently his Lakeland Terrier was a "Risk" because 2 women tripped over his skateboard. Sorry, but if you can't get out of the way of a dog on a skateboard, you should be worrying about other shit before reporting the canine and it's owner to the council.

Not the dog in question, yesterday.

The last week saw the death of Severiano Ballesteros, who I'm shocked to learn, was widely considered "The Greatest" amongst his peers. I'm no golf fan, but this guy's death struck a chord with me for a couple of reasons. Firstly, we're the same age -and this has made me think about my own mortality really for the first time- and secondly, the man simply transcended his sport. Even people who have no interest in golf -like me- knew who he was and had nothing bad to say about him -and I have plenty of bad things to say about almost everyone.

Most sports have a star who becomes bigger than the game -Babe Ruth, Michael Jordan, Don Bradman- in golf it was Seve.

Short thoughts

You know when you're in the cinema and someone near you is noisily munching their way through what seems to be a titanic sized vat of popcorn? It annoys the crap out of me frankly, but I doubt I'd shoot someone for being a bit loud during a film. What am I talking about? Well, that's exactly what happened during a screening of Black Swan in the Latvian capital Riga, last week. Riga police confirmed that a 27 year old man had shot a 42 year old man at the city's Cineplex, and that the argument began over how loudly he was eating his popcorn. The moral of this story? Don't annoy Latvians.

A Latvian, yesterday. Scary.

Here's a question. Do you take a sword to work with you? No? How about a bazooka? I thought not. I mean, there are some jobs where you might take a weapon to work - Ninja, Yakuza, train robber, Game Keeper - but not that many, and certainly not footballer. So why then, I've been wondering , did Ashley Cole take an air rifle to Chelsea's training ground with him and then promptly shoot a work experience kid with it, albeit accidently. Because he's a fucking moron, that's why. Case closed.

Finally and sadly, Jane Russell has died aged 89. Most famous for starring in westerns and with Marilyn Monroe in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, she was one of the most beautiful of the Hollywood leading ladies in the post war era.

Short thoughts

As I mentioned in my "bored" post below, last week my wife and daughter went to see a car and my sister in laws' newly arrived twins. As I anticipated, the twins -Robert and Gemma- were, in fact, exceedingly cute. There's a shock, all babies are cute. Well almost all babies. A few years back when our girls were babies themselves there was this unfortunate kid called William and boy, cute was the last word you'd use to describe him. If you'd painted the top of his head green people would've thought it was a watermelon, it was that massive. Anyway I digress. The car she went to look at was a grey Ford Focus, the car that'll be here soon is a green Renault Megane. OK. Close enough.

A green Renault Megane, yesterday

The football transfer window came to a close and in a totally unexpected turn of events, Liverpool fans proved themselves to be utter tools. Again. I know, it's a terrible shock and totally out of character, but there you go.

Instead of celebrating the fact they'd just signed Uruguay's second best striker to replace Spain's second best striker, they showed their displeasure in a more....... incendiary manner. Mind, you, their mood may not have been helped by the fact they'd just spent £35 million on a stupid looking geordie with a crap haircut and a prison record longer than Lee Bowyers'.

"Cry-y-ying, Over You...."

And in Queensland, which has been through a bit of a rough time lately -the terrible floods which cost a lot of lives have barely subsided, the locals predilection for wearing cowboy hats in public- they may have finally gotten a bit of a break with the news that Cyclone Yasi missed the two largest population centres in it's path -Townsville and Cairns- and slammed in to the coastline between the two. It's about time something went right up there. Now, if we can just sort out the cowboy hat thing.......

Cyclone Yasi yesterday, robbing Queenslanders of their hats

Hello

Hi everyone out there in internet land, it's been quite a while since I last inflicted a blog post on you (ok, it's only been about 2 weeks, but it seems like a long while), and because it seems like a long while, I'm going to do a sort of retrospective of what's been happening since my last post.

Australia have tamely surrendered the Ashes, and although it pains me to say it, England deserved to retain the urn. They've been the better team throughout -Perth aside- and are currently heading towatds a win in the Sydney test too. Happily, these things are cyclical, and it's England's turn to be on top for a while. Not for too long with a bit of luck.

Chin up, Skip

 

Staying in the southern hemisphere, a 110 year old Malay man has just got married for the 6th time to a youngster of 82. Ahmad Mohamad Isa, who has 20 grandchildren and 40 great grandchildren, showed that romance wasn't dead when he said   

“It doesn’t matter who she is, as long as she can cook for me.”

"Huh, what?"

Ronaldinho might be joining Blackburn. Yes, that Ronaldinho and that Blackburn. I can't say I've ever been jealous of BRFC before, but if this happens........... Come on Bill, sell a few more tickets to one of your shows, find a few quid and sign him. Yes, I know he's not what he was, and that he's a bit fat, but if you ever wanted a signing to raise the profile of the club.....it's a minimal risk. Even if he does bear a striking resemblence to Donkey from Shrek.

Eeeee-yore

And finally a sad farewell to British actor Pete Postlethwaite, most famous -to me at least- as Mr Kobayashi from the Usual Suspects, he was once described by Steven Spielberg as the best actor in the world. For what it's worth, I agree.

RIP Pete

Everton

As much as it pains me to say it, as things stand right now my beloved Everton are, to be frank, shit. On saturday we drew 0-0 at home to Wigan. Wigan for gods'sake! We dominated most of the play but couldn't score, Louis Saha seems uninterested, Jermaine Beckford isn't really good enough, and Yakubu, well he's Yakubu. Slightly......erm....rotund, lazy and half arsed -except for a couple of days a season where he looks like a cross between Didier Drogba and Zinedine Zidane- it looks like he wants out. So then, the simple answer is to buy a striker, a really good one. Well yes, it is. But there's one small problem. Everton don't have any money. Nothing. Nada, not a bean or a pot to piss in. Nothing.
So then, we are going to have to sell some players -plenty of candidates, Johnny Heitinga, the Russian with the unpronounceable name and the Yak- to buy one or two, or get in a loanee of some sort. Great.
Maybe we can convince Man City to let us have Carlos Tevez if we give them all 3 and any spare change Chairman Bill can find down the back of his Technicolor Dreamcoat. Yeah well, it's as realistic as Liverpool wanting to swap Torres for him.

Stop grinning, fool.

Short thoughts

Just in case anyone out there is unaware that the UK is currently in the midst of some quite cold weather, here's proof that even way down south in the -comparably-tropical-to-here- parts of the country that not all is as it should be.
Yesterday the RSPCA was called on to free a swan that had somehow managed to get its feet frozen to a driveway in London, a cow which had fallen over in Leighton Buzzard, and a horse trapped in 4 feet of frozen water in Lincolnshire. Oh, and 200 people have died in a landslide in Colombia, but that's nowhere near as newsworthy as a few cold animals, obviously.

"Where's Colombia?"

The world's 2nd most stupid football club has sacked their manager. The manager that got them back into top flight football on a shoestring budget. The manager that currently has them sitting reasonably comfortably around the middle of the premiership, the manager  that the players came out and pledged their support to. It's fine sacking a manager if the owner wants to, that's his choice. The unsavoury thing here is that the clearly held off giving Hughton a new contract to save themselves a few quid in severance payments. Classy as ever.

A pair of typical geordies

Now, not normally much occurring on Radio 4 -or any radio channel for that matter- but when a man with the startlingly appropriate name of James Naughtie makes an on-air gaffe concerning the Culture Secretary -a man called Jeremy Hunt, well, that get's my attention.

"Jeremy what?"

Press "play" http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/audio/2010/dec/06/james-naughtie-jeremy-hunt-radio-4

The World Cup

As you may or may not know, yesterday England dispatched the Prime Minister, David Beckham and an unemployed man from London called Billy to beg Fifa -an organization that isn't even slightly corrupt- to let them have the World Cup. It didn't go well.
Russia will be holding the 2018 World Cup, much to the chagrin of said trio.
Even by their own low standards, this was a poor show for an England team, who have pulled off the impressive feat of crashing out of a World Cup eight years before it even starts.
The British press haven't taken it particularly well, most of the headlines being along the lines of "WAH WAH WAH WAH WAH WAH WAH WAAAAAAAAAAAH"

In somewhat associated news, Australia weren't awarded the following World Cup either, as Fifa decided to give it to a collection of sand dunes in the Middle East. Which was nice.

"yeah, it's this size"

Even more shorter-than-normal thoughts

Hi all. I've been nearly dead for a while (Ebola again) and consequently haven't had the time to do anything of substance. Normal service will be resumed on my next post.

There are now just 3,200 tigers left in the wild. Three of the nine subspecies (the Bali, Javan and Caspian tigers) are extinct; a fourth, the South China, is also lost to the wild, with a few dozen specimens surviving in captivity. Tigers' survival is not guaranteed even in the most protected places: four died in a north Indian reserve named after Corbett earlier this year. The national animal of India, Nepal, Bangladesh, Malaysia and North and South Korea; the majestic creature at the heart of eastern and western culture from traditional Chinese myths to evil Shere Khan in the Jungle Book and cuddly Tigger in Winnie the Pooh; the big cat that sells us beer, petrol and other human essentials such as sugar-frosted breakfast cereal, is teetering on the very brink of extinction.
On November 21, various heads of state and assorted other diplomats are going to convene in St Petersburg at the snappily titled Tiger Summit, which has been widely billed as the last chance to save the big cat from extinction. Some conservationists feel the participants are remote bureaucrats with no experience of the on-the-ground realities. Others are refusing to go at all. Tiger experts are agreed on the prime, simple cause of its disappearance: it is being massacred for a lucrative illegal trade in traditional Chinese medicine. So, as we know why it's disappearing, surely the answer to this problem is a simple one? I'm going to answer my own question here. The answer is money, as it is to everything like this. In this case, money for more game wardens to patrol areas where the poachers operate.
Simple, I've saved the tiger. All we have to do now is wait and see if anyone else wants to do it.

"They're grrrrrrreat"

BBC weatherman Tomasz Schafernaker (nice name) has caused a major furore in the home counties by having the downright brass neck to present the weather whilst -and you might want to sit down before reading this- wearing a jumper and jeans. I know, it's unbelievable, the end of days.

Public Enemy No1

And in a move which headline writers everywhere would love, cash strapped Manchester City are after Porto's man mountain striker Hulk. Hulk's not so keen though, maybe he's been to Manchester before, eh?

He's probably pressing a car full of attractive but badly acting teenagers effortlessly above his head right now.

"Raaaaaaargh! Hulk no go City"

More short thoughts

First off, apologies for another mishmash-not-really-about-anything- type post, but my plans were changed by my daughter. I was going to do a lengthy and incredibly interesting (stop laughing) run down of my top 10 albums of the year, but she has insisted I wait until later on in the month which is when MCR release their new cut. Which is going to be brilliant, apparently. Hmmm.

A woman has been reunited with her diamond ring - two years after flushing it down the loo and hiring a waste firm to sift through sewage to find it.

After accidentally losing the ring, Joan Speirs paid the company to put a camera into the cesspit tank.
When that didn't work, the company filtered the 12,000 gallons of waste and even sent a worker into the tank with a metal detector, but to no avail.
But by an amazing co-incidence, an employee from the same small family firm stumbled across the ring more than two years later at a sewage works.
"Two of the smaller diamonds had fallen out but apart from that, it was just in need of a good clean".

I bet it was.

"Found it!"

Keeping up with the highbrow nature of todays post, we now move onto rugby league, more specifically, Joel Monaghan.

For those of you who don't know who I'm talking about, Mr. Monaghan is a centre/winger forthe Canberra Raiders and sometimes New South Wales and, in times of need, Australia. So, not a bad player then? Well no, and despite his physical handicaps -he's ginger- he's done pretty well for himself.

Up until yesterday, that is.

Yesterday, young Joel was all over Twitter. Well, not him exactly, a picture of him. A picture of Joel being ....erm......"pleasured". By a dog.

Yes, by a dog.

Joel has since come out and said exactly what you'd expect him to say - "I was drunk......I wasn't thinking.......I'm sorry...." Blah blah blah. He's also said the act was simulated. It wasn't -I've seen the pic (and thanks for sending me that-no christmas card for you this year)I wish I hadn't seen it though, anyone got any mind bleach?

There's no truth in the rumour that he's been charged with terrierism. Or that he's interested in joining the Bulldogs.

"Woof"

In other sport related news, Liverpool FC Brad Pitt a-like Dirk Kuyt's night ended in ...carnage when a police horse accidentally sat on his car while herding Napoli fans away from Anfield. Haha, that's a shame. And David Beckham has denied reports that he is interested in taking American citizenship. In the Daily Mail's report of the story, however, they spend the first eight paragraphs talking about the possibility of him becoming American and how terrible it would be without mentioning, at least until paragraph nine, that he said yesterday: "I have no intention of becoming a US citizen. I'm English and proud to be – that will never change."

 Not American.

Short thoughts

California is going to vote on whether or not to legalise pot -as well as other, duller things- a measure letting anyone 21 or older grow and possess marijuana, and allowing local governments to license and tax retail outlets selling it.
The measure, if it passes, would offer legitimacy to growers who for years have operated in a grey area of the law, and raise a potentially huge new revenue source for recession-hit states.
Sounds good to me.

"Who you callin' a pothead?"

In the week when the UK government has announced public spending cuts on.......well, everything, young Mr. "Tabloid" Wayne Rooney has kept the government of the front pages of said tabloids-and indeed the real newspapers by having a bit of a hissy fit.
Tabloid Wayne wanted out of the self-styled "biggest club in the world" (Real Madrid anyone?) because things weren't going quite to his liking. Diddums.
So what did they do?  Did Fergie and his band of Glaswegian hit men tell TW to get on with it and stop his incessant moaning?
No.
They gave him a new 5 year contract worth £200,000 a week. Double his previous salary.
He's in Dubai right now, recovering from a mild case of ankle-ouch. I'm glad to see it wasn't too traumatic a time for the poor bloke.

United fans understated reaction to TW being moody

And finally, my youngest daughter is down in the big smoke (well alright, Edinburgh) to see her favourite band tonight. 

Tell me, would you pay money -and quite a lot of it- to listen to these guys?

Short thoughts

The Chilean miners' rescue has confused me somewhat. Not the actual freeing of the pit workers, obviously, but the fact that many of them gave a lot of the credit for their rescue to God.
As a non-believer, I am astonished by the humility of those who would give God the credit for their own man-made deliverance, but also confused by it. The miners were in some respects lucky – they had space to move around in, a natural shower to wash in, and they weren't trapped in a coalmine where methane gas might have killed them. Such good fortune they may well have attributed to God. But what do they think God was doing when nearly 500 people died in a Chilean earthquake early this year? Was he on holiday? Doing the washing up? The seemingly random nature of God's mercy is something I have always had trouble with.
And you can forget about that "mysterious ways" bullshit too if that was going to be your response.

"Now...reach for the stars"

The Commonwealth Games have just finished, and it seemed like no-one cared that they were on. Certainly not the majority of elite athletes who could have competed if they had chosen to. And certainly not the majority of the Delhi public, who were kept away by the high (relative to earnings) price of tickets, the lack of the aforementioned superstars, and almost certainly the fact that India were playing test matches against Australia at the same time the games were on. Knowing the love the Sub-Continent has for cricket, that's a stupid piece of scheduling by someone.

"Good this innit?"

Pizza Express, a national restaurant chain here in the ever sunny UK, is going to teach it's staff to flirt with customers. No, really, I'm not making it up or anything.
The family-friendly restaurant, famous for serving up "bambinoccinos" – a cappuccino without the coffee for kids – has recruited classically trained actor Karl James to teach flirting and the art of chit-chat to staff to help them to butter up the restaurant's customers.

Great. Who wants to be flirted with by a teenager covered in acne? 

I feel a rebranding is in order here. Pizza Distress? Pizza Depress?

"Hey baby, fancy a calzone?"

Oxymoron

An oxymoron is a phrase that contains an element of self-defeating contradiction. Like "Australian table manners", or "German sense of humour" or "Local Liverpool fan" or "people who use the word 'oxymoron' and who aren't also just a little bit irritating and likely to suddenly dip into the appropriate foreign accent while pronouncing foreign words, as in 'I think I'll have the broos-ketta'".
Another example: "Arsenal goalkeeper".
It's not so much that Arsenal have no goalkeeper, more that the word "keeper" seems wrong here. Perhaps a better alternative would be "Arsenal goal-stander", or "Arsenal goal-curator", or simply a footnote to make it clear that "keeper" is being used in the same sense as "park keeper" or "game keeper", to denote someone who tends and oversees, who puts the towels in the corner and stamps down divots.

Having said that, I've always kind of liked current No1 Manuel Almunia, in particular his mournful facial expression which makes him look at all times like a man who has just been told his budgie has died. This special look was on constant display last Saturday, when Almunia was blamed for at least one of West Brom's goals, most notably the one where his attempt to deflect the ball to safety via a spectacular on-field tribute to the moment in Grease where Danny Zuko drops to his knees while jiving at the Rydell High dance ended up backfiring a little.

Dead budgie alert

Sadly, it's more bad news for Manuel as he is now injured and unable to play in the Arse's Champions League trip to Serbia to play Partizan Belgrade.
"We have Manuel Almunia out," Arsene Wenger said. "He has a problem with his elbow. He caught it when he made the penalty on Saturday." Which was, of course, the only thing he caught on Saturday. Asked if his goalkeeper had been dropped Wenger clenched his fists Scrappy Doo-style while deliberately rolling up a single shirtsleeve and replied: "We win together and we lose together even if people think he made a mistake on the second goal," saying the last bit really quickly and in a quiet voice.

"No, I'm totally happy with Almunia"

Good news, though, for Arsenal fans relieved to be relieved of a flailing goalkeeper with an angular haircut and a habit of waggling his arms about before crumpling in a heap and then sadly retrieving the ball from the back of his own net: Lukasz Fabianski is primed and ready to step in. Oh.

"Hey, they're not allowed to kick it at me are they?"

Everton v Man Utd

Today is our first big match of the season and given the.....erm......extra curricular activities young Wayne has been hitting the headlines for and his subsequent plea for privacy, I'm hoping his mind won't be fully on the task at hand.
On the off chance that he's reading this, I'd like to show you all (and you Wazza) how I see his future life and career panning out.

2011 - My dog bites Wayne. I’m awarded compensation, Chi undergoes therapy
2012 - Transfers to the newly wealthy Leyton Orient "Working with manager, Haitian President and Deputy Pope Wyclef Jean was too much to ignore" tweets divorcee Rooney.
2013 - Photographed in swimming pool full of Tia Maria by News of the World
2014 - Finds God, transfers to Celtic, Rangers win title. England are beaten by the EU in World Cup quarters.
2015 - Finds different God, transfers to Rangers. Celtic win title. Offends 99.3% of world population with fashionable but obscene forehead tattoo of Picasso's Guernica.
2016 - retires to run gentleman's estalishment in Wycombe. Colleen Rooney-Ferguson appointed first female manager of Manchester United.
2017 - Manchester United go into receivership. Old Trafford burns to the ground following a freak scrambled egg accident.

And to think some people think I'm bitter.

"The horror, the horror"

Liechtenstein

Liechtenstein has had some lows in its time: constantly getting mixed up with Luxembourg; having a pointless "e" as its third letter; and that time back in the early 90s when an epic battle between 100-foot tall mutant firebreathing kestrels laid waste to its wine industry. I may have made that last bit up.

But last night came the mother of all balls-ups as Liechtenstein lost to little-known minnows Scotland in the Euro 2012 qualifiers.
Admittedly Scotland do have some international pedigree, having once scored a good goal against Holland in the 1978 World Cup, but they're also the team responsible for that draw with the Faroe Islands, that other draw with the Faroe Islands, that loss to Costa Rica that Nigel Quashie, and those Andy Gorams.

Understandably, after coming from behind to beat a team that was superior to them for much of the match, Scotland coach Craig Levein was jubilant. "It can be a turning point because there is a big difference between two and four points," cheered Levein, displaying his head for figures. "I am a happy man, the stats show we are top [of our qualifying group] and that is the most important thing."

Meanwhile, Scotland captain Darren Fletcher revealed what it is that makes Liechtenstein such a dangerous force in international football: their use of tactics never seen before on the field of play. "To lose the goal was really disappointing and it was a real battle from then on," bleated Fletcher, whose fans booed the Liechtenstein anthem because it uses the same tune as God Save the Queen. (not the Sex Pistols version, although I can't help but think it would have been greatly improved if it was.)
Battling? Getting men behind the ball? No wonder it took your team until the 354th minute to score the winner. Its the kind of chicanery a guild of thieves would be proud of, Darren. Next time just get the firebreathing kestrels on the Liechtensteiners, they hate that kind of thing.

"Is that a fire breathing Kestrel? "

Yesterday

Don't panic, I'm not about to launch into a Beatles medley (mainly because I've always thought they were crap-but that's a post for another day), but yesterday, in addition to being my birthday (How old? -Very) it was the end of the football transfer window. How exciting.

It was like National Bloke in Car Park Day yesterday, as across the country gentlemen were donning their suits and taking to their nearest tarmaced surface for a full day of not-doing-anything-really thrills.
Sky Sports News, bankrolled as they are by Rupert Murdoch's billions as well as my own £40 a month, went a little over the top and had outside broadcast crews on hand to record evidence that their blokes were indeed in car parks and that they were not doing anything really.
David Craig in Sunderland had a bacon sandwich, a chap in Stoke bumped into Salif Diao, and someone in Liverpool saw Ryan Babel get into a helicopter and fly south, leading to widespread assumptions that the rapping wide-man was heading for "the Midlands, or London somewhere, or the south coast, or Paris, or Lyon, or Libya, just depends how much fuel he's got really, and whether he keeps going in a straight line" and ... hang on ... News just reaching us from Watford General hospital, where a bloke called Jim has arrived with a bunch of flowers and put £2 into the pay-and-display machine! "Incredible scenes here," screams a dull looking man "Jim just pulled in, stormed out of his car and paid up for anything up to two hours. Looks like he could be planning to stay for some time. Back to you Brian."

The one thing of note that did happen was Robinho going from Man City to Milan, for quite a lot less than they paid for him not that long ago.
Did a man stand about looking gormless in the San Siro car park waving his lunch around and shouting about this momentous event? No, of course not, that would have been silly.

Robinho yesterday, sad to be leaving Manchester

Football

Because Everton started the football season in their traditional manner -by losing- I'm going to ignore that and give you something else instead -well a couple of things, actually.

Transfer window highlights so far


 Best payback:

April: Paddy Kenny says the way Sheffield United backed him when he failed a drug test was emotional. "I just owe the club my career. Everybody here has stood by me. I can't repay them enough."
June: Rejects new United contract. Joins QPR.

Paddy Kenny yesterday, just after noticing his superman impression was shit

 
Most far-fetched:
February: Kenwyne Jones says he'd only leave Sunderland for "one of the world's biggest clubs". "If one of them comes in for you you might want to go to that next level ... but I have never given any indication that I want to leave or anything like that. The stories are so far-fetched. People know how committed I am to Sunderland."
August: Joins Stoke.

Kenwyne Jones yesterday, just after realising he'd joined Stoke

Best hands-off warning:
Inter, July, reassuring fans: "It's true that every day we are receiving calls ... But Mario Balotelli is priceless. He is not on the market. He will stay with us 100%."
August: Joins Manchester City

Mario Balotelli, yesterday, just after he found out how much City were going to pay him

Most bored:
1 August: Christian Poulsen's agent. "The newspapers have no link to reality. Let me close this saga once and for all. He is staying in Turin. The constant stories make us tired. Christian will not join Liverpool. "
12 August: Christian joins Liverpool, presumably because of something massively horrendous he did in a previous life, the poor bloke

Christian Poulsen yesterday, just after realising he'd joined Liverpool